NICTA researchers are learning how to protect their bionic eye circuitry with nanodiamonds, designing radiation detectors for ports and airports, and updating 40-year-old traffic control algorithms.

In this week's Patch Monday podcast, we bring you just some of the research presented at Techfest, NICTA's annual showcase of new technology.

NICTA is National ICT Australia Ltd, the nation's research centre of excellence for information and communications technology. Its primary mission is to develop new technology, taking it from the research stage right through to commercialisation.

Senior electronic engineer Clive Boyd tells us that the bionic eye project we reported on last year is now dealing with the challenges of inserting electronics into the human eyeball — a sack of salt water that isn't healthy for the components of the bionic eye. The solution is to encapsulate the electronics in a protective layer of nanodiamond.

And NICTA has also been looking at new and more efficient ways to manage the flow of traffic through traffic lights — not before time. The Sydney Coordinated Adaptive Traffic System (SCATS), licensed to 144 cities worldwide, dates back to the 1970s. Dr William Uthur explains how it might work.

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